[Funding roundup] AquaExchange, Urvann and Metastable Materials raise early-stage funding

Tech platform for aqua value chain AquaExchange raises $3 million

Bhimavaram-headquartered technology platform for shrimp and fish farmers, AquaExchange, has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round of funding from Endiya Partnersand Accion Venture Lab, with participation from returning investors. 

The company will use the capital to strengthen technology, ecommerce operations and expand its farm automation footprint to over 1 lakh acres of farms by March 2023. 

Founded in August 2020, AquaExchange merged with IoT (Internet of Things) maker NextAqua in April 2022. The AquaExchange platform offers fintech-enabled ecommerce solutions for buying inputs, farm automation service through IoT devices from NextAqua through a subscription-based system and a harvest-as-a-service market-linkage platform for transparent pricing for the farmers.

AquaExchange has patented its power management tool PowerMon and feed management tool, AquaBot. 

Gardening marketplace Urvann raises seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures

New Delhi-headquartered hyperlocal marketplace for gardening, Urvann, has raised Rs 3 crore in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). The round will be used by the company for geographical expansion.

Founded in 2021 by husband and wife, Sambhav Jain and Akanksha Gupta, Urvann offers plants, seeds, fertilizers, soil, gardening equipment, planters and other accessories by connecting local plant nurseries with online customers. The company’s hyperlocal services are currently available in Delhi-NCR, offering next-day delivery of plants.

Urvann claims to have processed over 15,000 orders and has delivered over 1 lakh plants to 6,000 customers since inception. It plans on expanding its operations to Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, and Chennai by end of the year. 

Metastable Materials raises Pre-Seed round

Bengaluru-headquartered Metastable Materials which extracts metals from end-of-life Lithium-ion batteries has raised an undisclosed amount in a Pre-Seed round. The round was led by Akshay Singhal and Kartik Hajela of battery manufacturer, Log9 Materials and saw participation from Archana Priyadarshini of PointOne and Sanjiv Rangrass, former Group Head of ITC, among other angels.

The company will use the capital to build a supply chain infrastructure for Lithium-ion batteries by extracting valuable elements by scaling its patented process. The capital will also support the team, operations, and infrastructure expansion for the startup. 

Founded in 2021 by Shubham Vishwakarma, Metastable Materials’ patented technology can extract copper, aluminum, cobalt, nickel, lithium, and other metals from Lithium-ion batteries. The startup has filed for four patents around its metal extraction technology.

(This is an ongoing story and will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)